I couldn’t resist posting more pictures of the marble caves; here they are.

After visiting the Marble Caves we headed out of town toward the border town of Chile Chico, to get there we drove along the south side of Lago General Carrera.  The lake is the largest fresh water lake in Chile and rivals Lago Titicaca in size.  As with the last 7 days or so the scenery was magnificent, the pictures look fantastic but they still don’t do it justice.

It took us a while to get warmed up after the boat ride but we had some lunch in the car and we picked up another woman hitchhiker named Rachel from Britain.  Arriving in Chile Chico we completed our time on the Carretera Austral which has been incredible valley after valley of amazing scenery, termas, volcanos, rafting and great people.  It seems like there are very few Americans in this part of Patagonia but lots of Chileans.  I have to admit that when planning this trip I would have skipped this entire part myself but we had some friend tell us not to miss it and they were right.

We did spot several condors in the air above the lake just before Chile Chico, they must have been Andean Condors and they were huge.

The next day we headed to Argentina and you wouldn’t blame me if I was a bit apprehensive about the border (Frontera) and getting the car through to Argentina, but I decided that we were due for an easy crossing.  That is exactly what happened, we got there early in the morning, cancelled our temporary import permit for Chile and got our passports stamped.  We crossed no mans land and entered Argentina and received our Temporary import permit for 90 days; our customs inspection guy was pretty lax and we were on our way.  Bienvenue Argentina!!!   In Argentina we the landscape changed pretty drastically changing from mountains to deserted high plains.  We had some trouble first getting money out of the ATMs but once we found an HSBC ATM we were in business.  Only 9 hours of driving to get to El Chaltan.

The next morning we got up and quickly packed up the car and went down to the shore to see if we could get a tour of the Capillas de Marmol (Marble Caves).   We found that some of the boats were heading to the Caves despite the wind and rough water.  This was our only opportunity so we bought tickets and hopped on board.  The boat ride out took 20 minutes to get to the caves which are only accessible by boat.

The marble caves were massive rock outcrops of white, brown and gray marble that are eroded where the lake is dissolving the rock over many years and creating large caverns.  The marble layers were folded in some cases making for very interesting designs.  We explored the caves for about a half an hour and then headed back.  The ride back ended up being very rough and took quite a while, everybody was very cold after getting splashed and blown around by the wind.  We learned later that a famous conservationist Doug Thompkins had died a year earlier on the same lake, he was in a kayak in the middle of the lake though with no coat on.

After fixing the tire in Coyhaique we continued along the Carretera Astral south to Puerto Rio Tranquilo, the weather has changed for the worse and rain pelted us for most of the day and in at least on pass there were massive gusts of wind.  We also saw one of the best rainbows of the trip, the kids took pictures of it with their ipads.

We have been completing school in the car this week as we have been moving to a different town everyday, the girls have been doing math apps and reading books, we will need to make up some journal time, but there should be no shortage of topics.  The last third of the road to Rio Tranquilo was unpaved through the mountains but we arrived with no troubles just lots of potholes.  The valleys and mountains were still spectacular in the rain.

Once we arrived in Puerto Rio Tranquilo we learned none of the boats were operating that day to go to the Marble Caves due to the rain and wind.  We had lunch and settled into our latest Cabana, Maddy went out to get food at the Supermarcado and she ran into an American couple Dan and Julia who were from Wisconsin!  We invited them over to our cabana for a visit, they ended up pitching their tent in the backyard of our cabana,  Maddy went out again for butter and wine and ran into Rachel one of our hitchhikers from earlier in Patagonia!  So we had her over a glass of wine and had a proper party, it is Mardi gras and all.  On that subject it is funny that we saw no organized celebrations for Mardi Gras in this predominantly Catholic country, guess we needed to be over in Rio.  We had a great night and chatted into the evening after putting the kids to bed.

Between Puyuhuapi and Coyhaique we drove through some amazing country we have ever seen.  It seems very sparsely populated and altogether very difficult to get to, maybe that is why it hasn’t been thoroughly exploited.

The roads were pretty good on this stretch of road, lots of pavement.  Coyhaique is a relatively large town of 50,000 people, it is in the intersection of several valleys and there are three river confluences within the area.  We explored the downtown area and had dinner near the town square, every town has one in Chile, they are open spaces with benches, trees and radiating paths out from the center.

Our plan was to get out of Coyhaique early the next day and get traveling done with early but a puncture in one of our tires caused a delay, our second of the trip.  I changed the flat and got the tire repaired in just over an hour.   I was also amazed to get the repair on the tire completed for the equivalent of $5, not too shabby.  Altogether a pretty easy repair.  Onward to Puerto Rio Tranquilo.

On Sunday we left Futa in the morning, we picked up two hitch hikers and we practiced our Spanish.  It is so hard when people talk so fast, Maddy and I are getting better but are nowhere near being conversational, we use google translate a lot, which is indispensable.   The drive was about half unpaved gravel road and half some of the smoothest asphalt roads you have ever seen.  At one point during the drive, we notice that things got really dark, what we didn’t realize that we drove through the partial solar eclipse, we wouldn’t have seen anything if we had realized it because it was cloudy but in hindsight it was a bit strange.

We arrived in Puyuhuapi around 1:30, and settled into our room at Casa Ludwig.  After relaxing for a bit we set out for a hike on the beautiful sunny day at the nearby Ventisquero hanging glacier, what a mistake that was…  We were told that there were several rock falls that had cut the road south of the town along the fjord but that they don’t shut down the road on Sundays from 1-5pm like they do during the week.  So not true, after discovering the road was totally closed we went back to town and let the kids play at a local playground, then once the road opened we sat through a two hour ordeal to go 20 kilometers to the park.  Of course once we got there the park had closed…. Arrrrgggghhh.  We back tracked and had dinner in town and the girls didn’t eat anything so we made mac-n-cheese at home. The only redeeming thing about the night was that we stayed at an interesting hostel that was run by a german/czech woman whose father was an original founder of the town in 1938.  The hostel smelled exactly like my paternal grandmother house in Phillips Wisconsin.  We made dinner and had a fantastic conversation with an Iranian man who lived in Australia and was traveling the Pan American highway.

The next day we got up and headed to the glacier and took a boat ride up the lake to get a view of the water fall and glacier, glad we went through the trouble because it was gorgeous.  We spent several hours in the park and then headed off to Coyhaique.  After several days of pretty amazing weather we started getting clouds but unlike early on in Patagonia we could still see the mountains and the amazing scenery.

We left Chaiten still shrouded in clouds, although the weather was supposed to be better.  We picked up three hitch hikers who were on their way to Rio Tranquilo and the Marble caves but only took them to Villa Santa Maria before heading west toward the mountains and Futaleufu.  The clouds finally burned off after a couple hours in the car and we got a beautiful sunny day and we finally saw those mountains, oh what mountains, each valley more beautiful than the next.

We stopped for lunch at Lago Yelcho, which was incredibly beautiful, but alas we were swarmed by bees, and nobody ate their lunch.

We loaded the car up and kept trucking up the gravel road.  We started driving parallel to Rio Futaleufu which was a beautiful greenish blue and had some amazing rapids, which we were told were class 5 and higher.

The road up to Futaleufu, about 70 kilometers or so, was dirt road with many potholes but the scenery was so worth it we didn’t mind at all.  Once we arrived in town we found our cabana for two days and checked in with our rafting guide for the next day.  We had dinner and headed back to our cabana but not before the kids got some free cotton candy, so we let them run around our courtyard to burn off their sugar intake.  We also had lots of apple trees for the kids to pick and throw and play with.  They finally crashed out probably around 11pm.

The next day we went rafting down the upper part of the Futaleufu River, which is the flat part, with one level 2 rapid.  We didn’t feel comfortable taking the kids on more than this, though we lamented that we were not able to go on rougher waters as this is a mecca for rafters and kayakers, some of the best in South America.  We went on a one hour trip and had a wonderful tour guide who spoke English. We had beautiful scenery, and I was the only who was brave enough to jump in…it was chilly!  It was a great adventure for the kids; although Julie got splashed on one of the rapids and had a pretty big fit.  The tour guide found a baby chick for the kids to play with once we disembarked and all the bad memories were forgotten.

We took a hike later in the day down the same river getting to re-live our raft tour from the shore.  We ran into apple, pear and plumb trees along the river and had a pre-dinner snack.  We got back to town had dinner and packed up our stuff for the drive to Puyuhuapi the next day.

We were up at 6:30am to catch our ferry, it was barely light out and we got to watch some fisherman head out among the fog and the clouds.

We headed up to our ferry and sat around for 30 min and then boarded, we were a fully stocked boat lots of backpackers too.  The crossing took a good 4 hours between Hornopiren and Leptepu; which allowed us to get some school completed and even a few zzzz. We did enjoy some scenery but were left wondering what it all looked like if there were no clouds.  Through the clouds we did finally get a glimpse of some spectacular waterfalls.

After disembarking the boat there was a 30 minute drive to the last ferry.   We picked up one hitchhiker, Rachel a Dutch woman who was grateful to get out of the rain even though we subjected her to our screaming children and the Disney movie Frozen.  After the last ferry (a 30 minute boat ride in high winds and rough seas) we had an hour and a half drive on mostly dirt roads which ended in Chalten.  We dropped Rachel in town and went to our rented cabana for the night.

Our rented cabana for three days was a cute 2 story house with a kitchen, lots of beds, and no internet or phone service.  It was ok for the kids but it was trouble for Maddy and working and I couldn’t update the blog.  The rain was still oppressive the first day and Julie and I were recovering from the cold Caroline gave us so it worked out.  We still managed to take a hike to one of the rivers that emptied into the delta that was formed near the town.  We hiked for at least 2 miles, I think it’s a new record, there were lots of rocks and drift wood to look at which was interesting for the kids.  There were also three volcanos in close proximity to the area which made for amazing valleys and picturesque mountain scenes; just wish we could have seen it.   I am sure there is amazing geology too; it seems like it is quite unusual to have subduction type volcanos on the edge of the ocean, the normal valley (ie.. central valley) between the coastal range and the volcanoes is flooded in this area; the coastal range is an island.  The glaciers are likely to be blamed for carving the valleys so deep.

Near our house we discovered a beautiful stream and a large rushing creek with beautiful clear water running in it, it reminded me of my youth and playing in the savage river at Denali National park.  The kids and I hopped around on the rocks for a good few hours until a few scraps caused us to retreat back home.  We tried to go out for dinner and found only a few places open at 5:30 when we wanted to eat dinner, pretty typical for the kids eating schedule.

The next day we did some writing for school and ventured out early to do a hike on the slopes of Volcan Michinmahuida, along the Fundo Rio Amarillo.  We hiked for about 2.5 miles, might have bested our new record!  We had lunch in this amazing forest covered in moss, reminded me of the temperate rain forest in Olympic national park.  As a reward for our hike we went to the Termas Rio Amarillo just up the road, there were only two pools but we could plunge into the river to cool off, the twins loved getting very cold and jumping back in the hot springs.  Caroline refused to eat her lunch and was a cranky mess the rest of the day.  We ate dinner at home and packed up our stuff for our trip to Futaleufu.

We packed up the house and got out of town, more rain was following us, but that didn’t dampen our spirits as we were starting the Carretera Astral which traverses the majority of the accessible Chilean Patagonia.  We first stopped in Puerto Montt the official beginning of the Carretera Astral, Maddy and the kids walked around town while I got an oil change and tire check.

Puerto Montt is probably the largest town we will see until we cross over into Argentina, it is a port town and you can catch a ferry to lots of different spots along Patagonia including all the way to lands end (not the retail store).

Once we had all our tasks finished we headed out of town toward Hornopiren where we would stay the night before our 4 hour ferry ride to Chaiten.  We did have one ferry crossing on the day, it was one which required no reservation between La Arena and Puelche; crossing our first Fjord of the trip!

The ferry was short 40 minutes and we were on our way south.  We did get some sunny weather in the middle of the day but it was short lived.  We arrived in Hornopiren and stayed at the Austral Lodge, which was an amazing rustic cabin that was recently remodeling.  We wished we had stayed there longer or at least until the clouds had broken it was beautiful in the clouds and fog anyway.

On Saturday night the twins had a legendary dance off, lots of energy expended, without going out into the rain.  After Maddy and I put the kids to bed, I went out on the town to check out the nightlife, somebody needs to right.  I had a pint of beer at the local Irish pub and watched the end of one of the local soccer matches and even the bartender said the match was a nothing game, it didn’t seem like it by the crowd and the cheering.  Afterwards I walked down to the local casino in Puerto Varas, it was interesting to see the scene, pretty packed on a Saturday night.  I played for about an hour on blackjack and craps and came out about $15 ahead, check me out.  I met some nice people at the tables mostly Chileans on their last few days of break before heading back to school or work.  I cashed in my winnings and went to a local pub for one more beer, there were no typical bar stools so I grabbed a booth, drank my beer as I seemed a bit out of place and zipped out of there.  On my way walking home I witnessed a hit and run or more like I heard it, a taxi was speeding away but I didn’t get the license plate.  An interesting night out no less.

The next day it rained and rained and rained, Caroline came down with a cold and she didn’t want to do much of anything.  It seemed like a good down day since we were heading out the next day.  We finally got Maddy’s Indian food as take out which was good but not great.  I uploaded lots of pictures and videos to the blog because we had great internet, we reserved a few places to stay reserved about a month in advance.

We left Pucon on Thursday after an amazing 11 days with incredible sunny and warm weather, I mention this because on Thursday it started raining and it seems like it hasn’t stopped.  We drove 4 hours south to the northern part of Patagonia where the weather has highs around 60 degrees Fahrenheit with lots of wind.  The town of Puerto Varas is located on a lake with a large volcano on the other side, giving us amazing view… unless it is cloudy.  The town is located at the beginning of a pass through the Andes that was important even during prehistoric time.

On Thursday we checked into our airbnb house that was located close to town, we then wandered around town and got some food which seemed like a late lunch, because everybody had a case of the “hangries”.  We went down to the shore and all the girls got their shoes wet in the lake.  On Friday the girls all decided to use their goody girl get out of school free cards (three good days of school in a row).  It was raining cats and dogs so we played some iPad in the morning then I took the girls out to lunch, hamburgers and papas fritas all around, Caroline was not feeling great so I dropped her off with Maddy and the twins and I went bowling.  We had a great time, the bowling alley was only about 1/2 the standard length in the US.  It felt like I was going to break the alley, and the twins got a few spares.

We went out for dinner and tried to go to a vegan Indian restaurant that Maddy really wanted to go to but it was not open at the appointed time, so we went to sushi, natural substitute right.  The girls were well behaved so we ate some ice cream at a local shop, the downtown was preparing for a concert but we went home because the weather was rainy and winding.

We slept in on Saturday but the day ended up not being too bad weather wise, we travelled an hour east to Petrohue which was located further up in the mountains between two volcanoes.  The views were spectacular with water falls, volcano views and a big river.  It was still a bit cloudy otherwise we heard the water was a stunning shade of blue from the glacial run off.  We had trouble getting the girls to eat and crankiness had followed us everywhere, we made the best out of it and had fun anyway.